Microsoft News Tracker

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly announced today that she agrees with the states who sought an extension of antitrust oversight of Microsoft and has extended it until November 12, 2009. This however was less than the extension to 2012 that the states had requested:

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I was going to post a cranky comment about the current epidemic of Windows 7 hysteria, but Ed Bott has beaten me to it:

All the kerfuffle over Windows 7 - leaked memos, shaky handheld video clips of leaked builds, equally shaky tentative release schedules - is amusing. I don’t have any inside information to offer, only a perspective drawn from 17 years of watching the Windows development process in action.

I hate to admit, but I have a couple of years on Ed and I guess we are fated to relive history as well as remember it:

All of those predictions miss one big point: There’s nothing “early” about the rumored H2 2009 release date of Windows 7. Last June, I argued that Windows Vista was the functional equivalent of Windows 95, with plenty of wrenching architectural changes that spelled pain for early adopters. Most of those problems were fixed with Windows 98. Likewise, despite the current love fest for XP, most people forget that its first years were plagued with bugs, driver hassles, and security problems (remember Blaster?) that weren’t stamped out until XP Service Pack 2.

Windows 7 is following perfectly in the footsteps of those two releases.

Hit the link for much more, but the punch line is Ed’s title: Windows 7 = Vista Release 2. Or as we used to say in the old days, Vista Second Edition.

Visual Studio 2008 was released to manufacturing in November and it has now become generally available:

Microsoft is proud to announce the availability of Visual Studio 2008 in volume licensing, retail, and MSDN download.

This exciting new version was released to manufacturing (RTM) on November 19, 2007 and at that time active MSDN subscribers were able to download it right away.  With its inclusion on the January 2008 volume licensing price list, the product is now available to sell and ship to your customers via Open, Select, Enterprise Agreement (EA), and Full Packaged Product (FPP).

One last hurdle: the marketing hootenanny in Los Angeles on February 27 where VS2008  will be “launched” along with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008.

Microsoft today announced a new site that will be showing Microsoft Content Ads - the Wall Street Journal Digital Network:

The Wall Street Journal Digital Network today announced an agreement in which Microsoft Corp. becomes the exclusive third-party provider of contextual and paid search advertising for its network of sites, including The Wall Street Journal Online, Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com, AllThingsD.com and others.

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The addition of these sites brings an additional 20 million unique visitors per month to the extended Microsoft network, enabling advertisers to reach out to an increasingly deep and attractive audience in the financial services vertical. The Wall Street Journal Digital Network is expected to begin providing Microsoft contextual advertising in February.

It is a two year deal with unspecified financial terms and Microsoft displaced Pulse 360 and business.com. Google’s erstwhile acquisition DoubleClick will continue to provide banner advertising.

The good news here is that this isn’t another instance of Microsoft vending old fashioned banner ads placed by their crew of banner ad salesman, but modern content targeted ads available to all advertisers through MSN adCenter:

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Microsoft beat Wall Street expectations today when it announced its fiscal 2Q08 results:

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that earnings jumped 81% for the December quarter thanks mostly to strong sales of its Windows software, and the software giant raised its outlook for the full fiscal year ending in June.

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Microsoft said net income for the period ended in December rose to $4.7 billion, or 50 cents a share, from $2.6 billion, or 26 cents a share in the same period a year earlier. Meanwhile revenue rose 31% to $16.37 billion.

Analysts on average have been estimating Microsoft would post earnings of 46 cents a share, on $15.95 billion in revenue for the quarter, according to Thomson Financial.

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Based on strong second-quarter results, the company raised its outlook for the full fiscal year ending in June. Microsoft said it now expects earnings between $1.85 and $1.88 a share for the year, and revenue between $59.9 billion and $60.5 billion. Analysts have been expecting earnings for the full year of $1.81 a share, and revenue of $59.36 billion.

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The company said its client unit, which includes Windows, posted a 68% gain in revenue in the second quarter, to $4.34 billion.

Note that the big gain for Windows client is partially due to the large revenue deferral a year ago, When that is added back in, the client revenue growth was only 18% and overall revenue growth was 15% instead of 31%. Note also that foreign currency exchange rates added 3% to revenue overall.

Below are the segment breakouts with some brief commentary based on the 10-Q.

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